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Sundance: Anita Hill finds hope reliving painful history

It's been 21 years since Anita Hill, right, appear in television to give testimony before a U.S. Senate committee examining Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas’s workplace sexual. (American Film Foundation)

PARK CITY, UTAH—Anita Hill says watching Anita: Speaking Truth to Power, the documentary about her landmark Clarence Thomas sexual harassment senate committee testimony 21 years ago, is painful but also leaves her hopeful about what the future holds for young women because of what has happened since.

“The thing that I love about this film is we’re looking at the next generation of young people ... and we have to really commit ourselves to getting it right in the future and that’s what I’m hoping this (documentary) will do for us,” said Hill, 56, after the premiere screening at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “To not simply think about the past but to think about where we need to go.”

Indeed, there is a generation that only knows about Hill from history class — if at all. So it’s fitting the first half of Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Mock’s documentary centres on the nine hours of Hill’s 1991 televised testimony before a U.S. Senate committee examining Supreme Court nominee Thomas’s workplace sexual harassment of Hill and the polarizing controversy that sprung from it.

The senators, convinced Hill was lying, tried to eviscerate her and expose what they assumed were lies, demanding to know if she was a scorned woman with an axe to grind and making her repeat Thomas’s clumsily lewd remarks over and over in an attempt to wear her down. In the end, the Senate appointed Thomas to the Supreme Court by a narrow margin.

The rest of the doc is more of a victory lap, looking at Hill’s beginnings as the youngest of 13 children growing up in poverty on a small Oklahoma farm, to her life as a professor, speaker and inspiration for young women.

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“It’s very emotional and I’ve seen (the movie) now twice and it has a very real emotional ... there’s pain but also when I see the last 30, 40 minutes of the film, I feel really good,” said Hill.

A superb speaker, Hill speaks to Mock’s camera with conviction and care. She loosens up somewhat when talking about her family and her long-time relationship with partner Chuck Malone, who also appears in the doc and was at the Sundance premiere with Hill and nine members of her family.

She isn’t much changed from the petite 35-year-old Oklahoma law professor in a blue suit who stood her ground with a clear voice and calm gaze during the long day of testimony. And she has no desire to hold grudges toward the senators, including committee chair Joe Biden, now the U.S. vice president.

“The fact that Joe Biden was on the presidential ticket and is the vice president, at this point in my life, that wasn’t enough to make me any less happy that Barack Obama (sworn in for his second term Sunday) was elected — twice — and so I am proud of that election,” said Hill. “I guess I have a tendency not to even think about Joe Biden and his role 20 years ago and what he’s doing today.”

What does anger her is the committee’s failure to call witness that would have supported her testimony, including an expert in the then virtually unknown field of sexual harassment “before there was even a name for it,” said Hill.

“When we look at this film, we realize how profoundly wrong we were in understanding the issue of sexual harassment 20 years ago, just 20 years ago,” said Hill. “And as we think about that issue and others we have to ask ourselves today what are we getting wrong, what are we as a public not understanding?”

Later, Hill credited her strong family ties with helping her then and now.

“You see my family members here and people will say, ‘How did you experience the film?’ I experienced the film in multiple ways but one of the ways that will continue to resonate with me is that these individuals who are standing here were all there 21 years ago and will be with me for the next 21.”

As for that blue dress, seen with every story that runs on Hill then and now, she still has it. In the film, she pulls it out of a closet, still on a hanger and in the plastic bag it was wrapped in after she took it to be cleaned 21 years ago. She has not worn it since.

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